2015 Tokyo and Hong Kong Trip – Image 8

Great photographers, and artists in general, often explore self portraits as a path to creative growth. For me, it helps my understanding of the relationship between what camera and subject – how changing what one is doing affects the other.

It is also interesting to look at yourself, and maybe discover something new.

And most importantly, the only person you are annoying and boring is yourself!

Whilst in Tokyo, I remained proactively conscious of opportunities to take interesting self portraits – channelling my inner Vivian Maier…

The mirror panels, combined with the cut out circles offered a great opportunity for something interesting. It kind of reminded me of this image by Maier.

Spotting the opportunity is something that I was pretty happy about, but the execution is not quite there for me. I was still struggling a bit with the 43mm lens on the Mamiya 7 (equivalent to 21mm in 35mm format). The wider your lens, the closer you need to get to your subject!

Getting closer to the mirrors might have helped the image by helping the viewer see me better.